


Demon Hunting

by Do_the_Cool_Whip



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Order of the Phoenix members, Dimension Travel, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:20:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24082747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Do_the_Cool_Whip/pseuds/Do_the_Cool_Whip
Summary: The war is finally over. Harry Potter lies down amongst the corpses of the final battle and dies. He wakes up on a mattress, something he hasn’t had the privilege of using in years. His parents are alive and so are Sirius, Remus, Albus, and even Snape.........And so is Voldemort.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Hannah Abbott/Terry Boot, Harry Potter & Ginny Weasley & Draco Malfoy & Astoria Greengrass, Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Justin Finch-Fletchley/Daphne Greengrass, Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Susan Bones/Blaise Zabini
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	Demon Hunting

**Author's Note:**

> This is rather important as a result of some of things I wanted to include in this story, I had to move the timeline about twenty years into the future. What does that mean? Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone takes place in 2011 instead of 1991. Moving the timeline up drastically reduced the amount of research I have to do and means I can throw whatever ideas I have into this story, so that’s what I did.

The last of them are dead. Harry is the only one still standing in a cavern stuffed to the brim with corpses. The blood is almost unbearable. It’s covering his skin, filling his nose, coating his tongue.

They’ve won. Even with this knowledge, having helped carry out the massacre, he struggles to believe it. The majority of the bodies are undeniably inhuman. Snarling fangs, thorny aciculae, twisted horns. These features are some of the most prevalent amongst the corpses. There are so many bodies scattered around him.

Only thirteen of them are humans. They had known that the battle here would be next to impossible. The odds astronomically out of their favour. Close to 1:500.

They had followed him anyways.

Each human body is pinned in place by a large pulsing black tendril that seems to sway slightly with every breath of its victim. Harry walks to the closest body, ignoring the way his wounds bleed, dripping down to mingle with the black blood of his enemies. Draco Malfoy isn’t dead, though his skin tone indicates that it won’t be long before he passes.

“I can’t believe we won,” Draco murmurs, eyes sliding closed. The veins under his skin are slowly turning black, like a tattoo of his circulatory system mapped out in real time.

Harry can’t believe it either. Here he is, twenty-three years old, standing on a battlefield littered with the bodies of his remaining allies.

_Voldemort has been dead for six years; he perished before this war even began. That doesn’t change the fact that everything that’s happened is his fault. He’d began preparing for the ritual, sent his followers to gather the materials and information, put the idea into the heads of a bunch of incompetents._

“We couldn’t afford to lose,” he says, wrapping his arms around the tendril pinning Draco in place and pulling on it. It doesn’t want to come loose; it thrashes and writhes in his hands. Draco lets out a choked pained sound and Harry forces himself to ignore the way that makes him want to stop and comfort Draco.

It’s almost surreal. Six years ago, Harry hated Draco Malfoy. He’d considered him little more than a waste of space. And yet, now, in this moment, he can’t stop himself from thinking about how important Draco is to him. How he’s a good friend, with a great sense of humour. How he’ll miss him when he dies. Draco has come a long way from the boy at The Battle of Hogwarts who pleaded with both sides to spare him, insisting he’s one of them.

He has to use magic to get it out, something Harry really hadn’t wanted to do. His own magical reserves are almost empty. But they’re trapped here. They knew they would be trapped when they came. But The Loathed had been planning to open another portal to Hell. And the world really couldn’t withstand that happening once more.

Not after they finally closed the other thirteen.

_On October 31, 2017, the remaining Death Eater fugitives, in an attempt to win a war that had ended six months previous, enacted Voldemort’s unfinished plot. They opened a portal to Hell, providing the creatures who lived there access to the Mortal Realm. They had intended to enslave them, force the monsters to do their bidding._

_They failed._

_Not a single one of the Death Eaters who had participated in the ritual had the magical strength necessary to bind even one of The Loathed to their will. Nor did they have the magical strength to close the portal they had opened. Of the twenty Death Eaters who had opened the portal, three were permitted to leave and warn the world. Those three had fled to Harry, half an hour before Halloween ended, and admitted through tears and shuddering breaths what they had done._

“Thanks,” Draco mumbles, pushing himself up slightly, blood spilling out of the hole in his abdomen. His skin begins to return to normal, his veins slowly becoming indistinguishable. He’s staring at Astoria. She’s pinned to a wall, a tendril protruding from her chest.

She won’t live long after Harry pulls it out.

Still, Harry can’t leave her like that. They’re all going to die in here, but they won’t die with those monsters’ blood running through their veins. Astoria smiles at him, black blood bubbling from her lips. With one shaky hand, she pats him gently on the cheek. Harry nods, “I’ll take you to him,” he promises. He gets to work removing the tendril.

_After the Death Eaters had informed him of what they had done, it had been a scramble to prepare to combat the enemy, to gather forces, supplies, and information. A scramble that had gone nowhere._

_For the second time in his life, Harry had been accused of being an attention-seeking liar. They claimed he couldn’t adjust to a life of peace. That he needed the attention and an enemy because he didn’t know how to live any other way. If Harry wasn’t so used to public opinion turning on him, he might have gotten whiplash from how they’d gone from praising him for killing Voldemort to reviling him for trying to warn them._

_The foreign nations they had requested aid from had refused either because they hadn’t believed him or because they hadn’t wanted to get involved. The Order of the Phoenix had done what they could with what they had, though their resources had taken a major hit when Kingsley had lost the election for the Minister of Magic because he publicly supported Harry._

Astoria coughs up blood, the deep black speckled with red, and her skin tone returns to normal when he pulls the tendril out. She slumps, almost lifelessly, into his arms and Harry struggles to hold her up. He’s never been very tall and the vast majority of people are taller than him. Taking her to Draco, without dipping into the dregs of his magical reservoir, would be an almost impossible task if not for the fact that Astoria stubbornly uses her own strength to walk, forcing her body to move despite the gaping hole in her chest.

She collapses on top of Draco, lips meeting on their way to the ground, and Harry heads for Daphne. The tendril is in her right foot, containing her to that one spot. She’s surrounded by a mountain of corpses, the bodies piled up to her shoulders. She’d been the first one caught, sending out a warning to avoid the seedlings because they were far more dangerous than they had assumed.

She’s pulling on the tendril, only letting go when his shadow falls over her. When he manages to sever it, she stands up and stretches. “Thanks, Harry.” She knows him well enough that she makes no move to touch him. She hobbles off to the other side of the battlefield and Harry doesn’t bother to stop her, he’ll get there eventually.

_Learning to fight The Loathed hadn’t been an easy task. They had to research them from legends and myths, try to design some way of hurting the monsters when they seemed to shrug off magical attacks like they were nothing. There had been so much to do and not enough time to do it. The first time a spell had done permanent damage to one of them, Harry had been so relieved he had nearly cried._

_It had been the Severing Curse, the curse Harry had almost accidentally killed Draco with in his sixth year. They, or rather Hermione and Luna, had tried to reverse engineer Snape’s spell and modify it for additional uses. Something about it had been different than the other spells they had tried. And they had rushed to figure out what that something was. They had only been partially successful._

_The fighting had consisted of a series of hit-and-run battles between the Order of the Phoenix members and The Loathed. It had originally taken about ten Order members to take down one demon. Each confrontation had ended with the Order of the Phoenix members leaving with their lives, not because of skill or luck, but because of the mercy of their enemy._

_It would take three years for them to figure out why The Loathed had been so merciful with them._

Blaise is face-down pinned by his shoulder; he’s holding Susan’s hand who has a tendril protruding from her left thigh. Susan grins at him, waving exhaustedly with her free hand. “Helluva party, wasn’t it?”

“You would consider that a party,” Blaise chuckles softly.

Harry feels a ghost of a smile on his lips when he kneels and works on the tendril in Blaise. He would have started with Susan, but she gave him a look. Harry knows what that look means. Hermione has trained him well enough to respond to it without a verbal order.

_That first year of skirmishes with The Loathed had been training. The demons would watch. They would watch in amusement as a team of Order members would struggle against just one of them, offering criticism and praise for their every move. The Loathed had waited until Harry and the others had felt almost confident fighting them before they made their move._

_On October 31, 2018, they came out of hiding. In the span of one day 666 666 people had died in 666 locations across the globe. 443 999 556 people had died in a single day. Approximately 5.8% of the world’s population. In most locations, the massacre had barely lasted more than a couple hours. In London, where the Order of the Phoenix was stationed, the fighting had been dragged out until the sun began to set._

_There had been no hiding the incident. Millions of muggles had been killed by The Loathed in broad daylight; news crews had footage and photos of people being devoured by the monsters. The focus, unfortunately, had fallen onto any video or footage of Order of the Phoenix members fighting._

Susan lies down beside Blaise the second the tendril is out of her thigh, pressing kisses to the side of his face, as their skin returns to normal. Blaise wraps an arm around Susan, pulling her as close to himself as he possibly can. Harry swallows, fights down the urge to run to check on Ron and Hermione. They will be the last two he goes to because once he gets to them, he won’t be able to bring himself to move from their side.

Terry and Hannah are speared on the same tendril and Harry wonders who had been protecting whom when they were hit. Hannah has her hands pressed against either side of the tendril in Terry’s chest; Terry has his hands on both of Hannah’s ears because it’s the only place that will give him access to her injury as the tendril goes through her head.

It’s a relief that they’re both still alive. He had honestly thought they had perished when their healing spells had stopped. It’s impressive that they’ve managed to keep each other alive for the past hour like this. He’d come over here expecting to arrange their corpses, not cut them down so they could finish fixing each other up.

Not that they would. It’s the adrenaline that’s been allowing them to keep their healing spells going. Once Harry frees them from the tendril, the rush will end and they will both die. It’s not a secret either, Terry manages a shaky smile at Harry, a hint of resignation in the curl of his lips.

_The Statute of Secrecy was in ruins. The people who had slandered Harry’s name were once again singing his praises, begging for him to save them. Collaborating with everyone in the world in order to solve the problem had been an impossible task. Countries were divided, refusing to work with each other. People were divided, prejudiced against the concept of wizards and witches. Prejudices were divided, muggles persecuting each other regardless of whether they were pro or anti magic, while wizards fought the same fight over muggles._

_There had been so much in-fighting._

_A second attack on the world occurred three months later. With everyone aware of the demons, the little information the Order of the Phoenix had gathered passed around, humanity had been able to put up a fight. The results were a mixed bag. Muggles, undeniably, killed most of the monsters. Their weapons capable of doing massive damage, even from a distance. Magicals suffered the least casualties, being able to heal the most severe wounds with little effort._

The hole in Hannah’s head closes, slightly slower than the hole in Terry’s chest. Their skin returns to normal. “Thank fuck.” The voice is little more than a whisper, but Harry suspects it’s Hannah. One of them is crying, Harry can barely make out the sniffles and broken sobs, more focused on making sure their skin goes back to normal. “Fucking cocksuckers.” Definitely Hannah. A year in the muggle military had somehow converted her to muggle slang and swears.

 _The obvious solution was to work together. Muggles use their weaponry to mow down the masses while magicals provided support. No one was okay with that. They all insisted that their fraction was perfectly fine and didn’t need help from_ them _. When a small experimental group was taking volunteers, both muggle and magical, in England to see if such a group would have any merit, there were only seven magical volunteers: Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Luna, Ginny, and Astoria._

_They had spent six months in a truly brutal muggle military training facility, undergoing intense workouts that had left all of them unbearably sore and barely able to function. It had been weird in a way, learning how to fight, putting up with drill sergeants. He has no idea how he never lost his temper so spectacularly he was thrown out of the program._

_The next time an attack occurred, their experimental group had done so painfully well that not only was it considered a success, muggles and magicals were conscripted into similar groups._

Neville, unsurprisingly, has a tendril growing out of each of his limbs. The only reason he stopped fighting is because he became physically incapable of moving. Still, there are at least three different carnivorous plants gnawing on different demon corpses. His eyes are closed, but his chest moves, slow and choppy.

When Harry begins tugging on one of the tendrils, Neville’s eyes slide open. “It was worth it.” Neville’s voice is rough, deep, firm. Harry is reminded of the little boy who once refused to step out of his way during their first year at Hogwarts. There’d been a sturdiness to that boy, an intangible strength and resolve that secretly clung to him.

It’s not a secret anymore.

People joke about it. The fact that Neville could have been Voldemort’s undoing is unsurprising. He’s Harry’s opposite in every possible way. He’s calm where Harry is frantic, he’s unyielding where Harry is flexible, he’s steady where Harry accelerates. When battle begins, Harry charges to the front while Neville plants his feet to cover the rear. If Harry is an unstoppable force, Neville is an unmovable object.

It’s a very good thing they have always been on the same side.

_The conscription had mixed results. Some teams tolerated each other and flourished; most groups resented each other and failed. For all that there was technically only one enemy, humans had been fighting a war on two fronts. One against their physical enemies; the other against their mental prejudices._

_They hadn’t been united. They hadn’t been fighting on the same side._

_A year and a half after The Loathed made their first public appearance, they showed up again. On April 4, 2019, Easter was interrupted by another attack. It was different than any other attack._

_The Loathed had changed. Their skin and scales were thicker, some had been wearing armour, some had wings and flew. Muggle ammunition bounced harmlessly off them, only the heaviest of artillery could do damage. The vast majority of spells they had been using were now ineffective. Very few people had been able to take them down. Harry’s team had been amongst the only three teams worldwide that had managed to successfully defend their assigned territory._

_They had lost 15% of the remaining population that day. And suddenly muggles and magicals realized they couldn’t afford to be at each other’s throats._

When Neville is free, he slumps to the ground, sliding down the wall he’d been pinned to. Harry would offer him comfort, but he knows there are others better equipped for the job. Ginny isn’t too far away from them. There’s a massive tendril wiggling around in her arm, it smacks her every once in a while in its enthusiasm, Ginny curses it every time and a flurry of sparks appear on it, flickering out of existence before it can do any harm.

“Hey, loser.” She punches the tendril with her free arm and barely dodges the retaliatory swipe it takes at her.

Harry sighs, lips twitching into a real smile, because of course those would be Ginny’s first words to him after the battle is done. “I could just leave you here.” He can’t. He knows that and Ginny knows that too.

“Lies,” she laughs, moving her arm out of his way, so he can access the tendril. “You would miss me too much.”

“You’re annoying.”

“I’ll tell Ron you said that.”

“Ron will agree with me.”

“I’ll tell Mum you said that.”

“I’ll deny it.”

Harry chuckles softly while Ginny makes an exaggerated groaning noise. “Shit. I keep forgetting you’re her favourite child.”

_Their weapons and magic were useless. A new method for fighting The Loathed needed to be found. Harry had an unfortunate increase in popularity. Nations were fighting to have him come to them and defend their countries. The Prime Minister and Minister of Magic spent more time denying other countries access to him than running the country._

_He’d been thoroughly uninterested in all of it, too focused on how the fuck he was going to stop the next attack when it took every ounce of his strength to deal with this one. Hermione had been the one who suspected that The Loathed were adapting to their way of fighting. She’d been the one to suggest that they travel to other countries in order to learn different types of magic._

_He’d agreed, making plans with the six other people who had originally joined the army with him. Somehow, what was supposed to only be a trip for seven people transformed into a trip for his entire squad of twenty-eight: fourteen magicals and fourteen muggles. They had doubled in size after the conscription, but Harry hadn’t expected everyone to want to come._

_Why would he have ever expected Draco Malfoy to willingly leave his home behind in order to help fight in a war?_

Ginny, skin a healthier shade of pale, drags herself to her feet, swats him over the head, and stumbles over to Neville. He doesn’t see Luna anywhere. Justin has his head pillowed in Daphne’s lap, a tendril protruding through his hip. Daphne strokes his face, the softest look in her eyes when Justin reaches up to brush a lock of her hair out of her face.

When Harry’s shadow falls over them, Daphne looks up and quirks an eyebrow at him. “So slow.”

“Did you have to show up now, Harry? Can’t a guy enjoy being pampered without being interrupted?”

Daphne rolls her eyes. “Pampered, my ass. You’re going to have to make this up to me.”

“I would love to pamper your ass.”

“I think that’s my cue to leave.” Despite his words, Harry steps closer to them, reaching down to wrap his hands around the tendril.

_They’d left, unexpectedly and without explicit permission. They travelled a lot. Spending anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months in any location. Muggle weapons and military tactics where similar across the globe. The same could be said about magic._

_Colonization had standardized magic. It was good for consistent laws around magic and the Statute of Secrecy, it was bad for finding a new way to fight The Loathed. After nine months abroad, they returned with very little new things to add to their repertoire. They’d all learned a couple of martial arts style, they’d learned gymnastic skills and parkour, they learned that Legilimency and Occlumency could be used to quickly learn and teach new skills._

_The next attack had been just as brutal as the previous one. It happened little more than three days after they returned to Britain. Again, Harry’s squad barely managed to defend their position. Again, the rest of the world lost a portion of its population._

Once the tendril is removed, Justin begins pushing himself up, only to collapse halfway up. “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” he grunts, panting slightly, skin returning to normal.

“Weak,” Daphne teases, tracing his lips with the tip of her finger.

“Bite me,” Justin grins, smile just a little too filthy for Harry to keep watching.

“Gladly.” The resulting sounds are a little too loud and Harry feels himself flush ever so slightly as he walks away from them.

Hermione and Ron are close to each other, fingers intertwined. He aches for them. He wants to squeeze in between the two of them and spend his final moments alive with their arms around him. But he can’t go to them until he finds Luna.

He’s at his wit’s end and glances up out of sheer desperation more than a systematic search attempt. Luna is pinned to the ceiling, a tendril growing out of her foot keeping her suspended upside down. She’s swaying slightly, blond hair swishing back and forth, and Harry knows that she must be humming a melody to herself. Like most things with Luna, her situation is completely bizarre.

_They needed a new method to fight The Loathed. That much was obvious. Africa and the Americas had been their closest leads, but most of the knowledge they had been seeking had been passed down orally and had vanished, or had become incredibly hard to track down, as a result of colonization._

_In a fit of sheer desperation, they made an impossible decision. It was obvious to anyone who knew them that Luna had been involved with the idea. The fact that they managed to succeed made it clear that Hermione was involved as well. They decided to convert muggle concepts of magic into reality._

_They’d abandoned every notion they had of magic and tried to create a brand new understanding themselves. They’d gone on another trip around the world. Last time, they’d been interested in different spells and how to accomplish different goals; this time, they focused on what magic is and how to understand it. All magic was done more or less the exact same way; however, the philosophy behind magic differed greatly depending on the location._

Harry jumps, covers about two meters of distance before he has to force the air to push back against his feet so he can get a another jump off. It takes about three more jumps before he reaches the ceiling, twisting to land on it and attaching himself to the surface with magic. “Lu, how do you get yourself into these situations?”

“Hmm,” Luna hums, still swaying slightly. “Sometimes, I follow the wrackspurts and they lead me into tricky situations. I think they occasionally collaborate with the nargles.” She’s unbothered when Harry crouches down by her feet, removing the tendril with more prejudice than he had any of the others. When he stands back up, her skin has returned to normal. Luna wraps her arms around him, and he allows it, holding her close as they plummet back to the ground.

She presses a kiss to his cheek and steps back, hands on his shoulders. Luna smiles at him, turns, and limps to Neville and Ginny. He’s an only child, but if Harry is ever asked about siblings, he’ll claim Luna as a younger sister in a heartbeat. She may not be normal, but the Dursleys had scared Harry away from normal a long time ago.

_It had been this journey that had taught them that magic wasn’t as standardized as they had feared. They’d been asking all the wrong questions. Once they asked about magic, about its identity and meaning, they got many different, occasionally contradicting, answers. By the end of the trip, a nearly yearlong journey, Harry and the others found themselves using their wands less and less._

_They’d spent so much time trying to understand the magic inside of them and how they could manipulate it they’d become attuned to it. Every exercise that taught them to interact with the physical or spiritual or emotional or mental aspects of their magic forced them to be more aware of their magic as a whole. Eventually, without even realizing it, Harry found himself so aware of his magic, he could feel it shifting beneath his skin. He could move it where he wanted it and twist it into whatever shape he wanted to manipulate it to pull off some of the stunts they saw in muggle media. They began to express it externally without a focus. The many hours and many different types of meditation and trances they had entered finally began to pay off. It was the first step in what would be a nearly impossible task._

_On Christmas of the year 2020, The Loathed attacked once more. Harry fucked up, at some point he’d ended up defenceless with one of them on top of him, teeth pressing into his neck. After a moment, the creature had chuckled and released him. The explanation it had provided was that he wasn’t ready to be consumed._

_The Loathed fed on two things: Magic and Despair. They had allowed him to become a symbol of hope to the world, when they finally broke him, the rest of the world would break with him. They had allowed him to time to train his magic because the stronger it was the better it would be for them._

_Harry was a delicacy they were carefully preparing and informing him of this was their first step in steeping him in despair._

Harry drags his exhausted body over to Ron and Hermione. The wedding bands on their fingers glint in a non-existent light, but Harry is more aware of the ring of red encircling their right pinkies. The same ring he has on his own pinkie.

Ron has two tendrils protruding from his chest; Hermione has one in her abdomen. All three of those tendrils had been targeting him. They’d saved him. Shoved him out of the way and taken the blow themselves. Harry kneels, resting his hand over their intertwined fingers, and lets himself enjoy the way their magic immediately rushes up to greet him, traveling down the length of his arm to settle in his chest.

It doesn’t take him long to notice the corruption. The sensation of something ugly and evil staining their magic. He pulls back and looks over them, hesitates before Ron shakes his head. “I won’t live long after you pull it out.”

_The Loathed had wanted to break Harry. So, Harry did the opposite. He got stronger, forced himself to improve pass what was thought possible. His entire team had followed him, dragging themselves through hell in order to keep up with him. There had only been twenty-eight of them, but they had pushed themselves to the very brink, forcing their bodies to overcome every single limitation they encountered._

_The next attack was six months later. It was a massacre. For The Loathed. Harry’s squad had mowed them down in their area. And then they moved onto the next one. And the next one. And the next one. By the end of the day, they’d repelled The Loathed from eight different locations. It had been the first decisive victory for humanity._

_Everyone had been ecstatic, hopeful, optimistic. It wouldn’t last._

He swallows, turns to Hermione who cocks an eyebrow at him. “Harry James Potter, you wipe that look off your face.”

He has a protest on the tip of tongue, but Hermione gives him a look and he swallows it down, a tiny smile tugging at his lips. The tendril in her abdomen comes out easily enough. She coughs up black blood, turning to the side to spit it out, and reaches up to tangle her fingers through his hair, dragging him into a rough bloody kiss. “I’d suffer an eternity of agony if it meant you would live, but a second more.”

His heart skips a beat. He feels himself blush and his mouth opens and closes uselessly because he doesn’t know what to say. He remembers being a small child, desperate for even one person to love him. And now here he is. A twenty-three-year-old man with a wife and husband, two beautiful children, and twenty-five other people who he can claim as close family.

_They hadn’t known at the time—how could they have?—but The Loathed had started a breeding program. They’d needed to. They’d been wreaking such havoc that humanity had been dying faster than they could reproduce. Many people who were thought to have died had been kidnapped and put into the program._

_When The Loathed decided he was strong enough, they kidnapped Harry and put him in the program. It was supposed to be the end of him, what finally broke him. Of his entire squad whom had been kidnapped alongside him, only Hermione and Ron were permitted to remain permanently at his side because The Loathed had known they were two of his greatest weaknesses._

_Ron was originally supposed to die. The Loathed had thrown him into a pit with a transformed werewolf. He’d survived, but not without being infected with Lycanthropy. His survival had given The Loathed ideas. They tore Hermione’s uterus out of her body, inserting it into Harry’s own. He has no idea how she had survived that ordeal._

_Probably Astoria or Hannah._

_Harry doesn’t know what they did to him, exactly. He’d passed out from sheer agony after roughly three hours. When he’d woken up, his testicles had been gone, replaced by a vagina. It had been a nightmare, made worse when they’d held a knife to Hermione’s throat and ordered Ron to impregnate him. Again and again, Ron had been forced to ejaculate inside of him._

_After two months, they were able to confirm the pregnancy._

He doesn’t say anything in response, just smiles at her and lets the warmth of her words settle into his soul. He turns to Ron, as Hermione drags herself closer to the red-head and kisses his forehead. He’s leaning over Ron, working on removing the first tendril, when he feels a massive hand on his ass.

“Seriously?” Harry tries to fight down his grin, but Ron squeezes and another one of his hands reaches up to cup his ass.

“I need one for the road. It’s going to have to tide me over until we meet again.” Ron kneads his handful gently and Harry can’t stop the soft moan that escapes him. The adrenaline is wearing off, with it comes the soft desperate excitement that leaves Harry aching to have proof that he’s still alive.

“Focus, love,” Hermione murmurs, eyes predatory as she appraises every part of him she can see, “finish removing the tendrils.”

Ron doesn’t stop groping him and Hermione doesn’t make any attempt to stop him. Harry slowly works on removing the tendril, doing his best to keep his noises barely audible. He doesn’t know who’s still alive in the cave and who’s succumbed to their injuries, but either way, he doesn’t want them to hear him moaning up a storm.

_After his pregnancy had been confirmed, things had changed. The Loathed who had always stayed back and watched, never doing more than threatening Hermione’s life to ensure Ron complied, began to get involved._

_They began to rape him. The Loathed fed on two things: magic and despair. They’d wanted Harry steeped in despair, so they’d gone for Harry’s other weakness._

_Touch._

_He can’t stand it. He hates when people he doesn’t trust touch him. They’d used that against him, touching him in places no one other than an unwilling Ron had touched him. To make things worse, they’d broadcasted it to the world. Occasionally, they would drag him out to the surface, force him to look up at the sky where his torture was being projected globally, so he could watch himself being raped while it happened._

_He’d almost broken._

_Harry can admit that this was what almost caused him to break apart, almost caused him to lose hope, almost caused him to give up. He’d only held on because Hermione had a plan. It was the only thing keeping him going._

When he finishes, Ron and Hermione pull away from their kiss and he’s able to make out a glimpse of their tangled tongues. They smirk at him, aware of what they’re doing to him. If it weren’t for the fact that he’ll be dead in soon, he’d threaten not to let them touch him. But he will be dead soon. And so will they. Everyone who hasn’t already passed on, will in the next hour or so.

Harry kisses Ron, slow and soft, and Ron gives his ass one final squeeze before releasing it, grabbing Harry’s hand instead. Hermione taps him on the shoulder, then hands him the mirror. If he’s honest with himself, Harry really isn’t expecting anyone to respond when he pushes his magic into the mirror and activates it.

“Grim Reaper?” Jack’s voice is shaky, incredulous in a way Harry can understand. He hadn’t expected to survive and check in with the rest of his squad.

“I could have sworn I’ve told you not to call me that.” He can’t even muster up annoyance at one of the many stupid nicknames his squad has labelled him with over the years. Jack is alive. He’s alive and talking to Harry calmly. Which means the fighting on the other side has ended and someone from the other half of his squad had survived. “The others?” He forces himself to ask, forces himself to keep his voice steady, forces himself to listen to the answer even though he can’t bear to hear bad news.

Originally, all twenty-eight of them were going to enter this small dimensional pocket and fight to the death to keep The Loathed from opening another portal to Hell, but preliminary testing indicated anything without magic would not be able to survive the trip. They’d been forced to split up, the muggles were responsible for clearing a path and preventing The Loathed from following the magicals into the portal.

He’d barely gotten a final glimpse of them, desperately fighting to give him and the others a chance to infiltrate, before the portal had shut behind him, whisking them away.

_The Loathed fed on despair, which is never more potent than in the moments after hope has disintegrated, as a result, they had made no attempt to stop Hermione’s plot. They’d even gone out of their way to help her. Bringing her the items she requested and allowing her to work unhindered on her escape plot._

_They’d been expecting it to fail. If Harry’s being honest, even he had expected it to fail. He’d hoped otherwise, but there had still been that small insistent part of him that doubted._

_Animagus had been her solution, not that Harry had known that when she forced him to keep a mandrake leaf in his mouth. She’d only brewed thirteen potions, which should have been his first clue because why thirteen potions when there were fourteen magicals, and it had taken six months for the conditions to become perfect for them to take the potion._

_After they had taken the potion, The Loathed watching in amusement, they hadn’t been any closer on figuring out how to escape. And then The Loathed had prepared to kill Hermione. They hadn’t wanted to risk her actually figuring a way out of their situation._

_He doesn’t remember it, but Ron tells him there was fire. It spread throughout the entirety of The Loathed’s base, consuming every human it came into contact with. What Harry does remember is waking up, seventh months pregnant, Teddy pressed into his side, and the entire military complex filled with sobbing people, desperately hugging loved ones they had once thought dead._

_The Loathed hadn’t expected Hermione’s plan to work. Harry hadn’t expected it work. It shouldn’t have worked. But, then again, no one had expected Harry’s animagus form to be a phoenix._

“Oi! Our fearless leader is on the line!” Jack calls out and suddenly Harry can hear the scuffle of the others fighting over the mirror.

He counts voices and faces, ticking off each member of his squad as they make a fool of themselves. Eventually, the mirror ends up in Keileigh’s hands and she analyses him with cool hazel eyes.

Ron’s hand, holding his firmly, large thumb running over Harry’s knuckles, loosens. His hand is completely limp. His magic, tightly intertwined with Harry’s and Hermione’s, fades. It doesn’t vanish completely, but it dulls to the point where Harry can barely feel it.

It’s heart-breaking, but Harry doesn’t allow himself to fall apart. Ron wouldn’t want that. Ron would never want that. Hermione sighs softly, shifting until she’s able to wrap her arms around him from behind, burying her face in his hair.

“We’ll look after Teddy and Lily for you,” Keileigh says.

Harry’s breath hitches. It’s this moment that causes his eyes to burn, tears he can’t stop trickling down his face. “Thank you,” he whispers, torn between this moment and everything else. “Do you remember the beach we stopped at last year?”

“Down in Australia?”

“Yeah. If you head into the cove where I had to do all that extra meditation, you’ll find two packages for them. Your dog tag will lead you to it. I left instructions inside the package, so just—just make sure they get them.”

“Of course.”

Hermione slumps down against his back, becoming deadweight that slowly crumples to the floor. Her magic fades away and Harry barely stifles the devastated sob that wants to leave his lips.

He can’t—He can’t do this anymore.

“The threat is gone, we’ve finally won, so this is goodbye,” he says, keeping his eyes firmly on Keileigh because he knows he’ll start crying if he looks at either Hermione or Ron. “It’s been a pleasure serving with all of you.”

Keileigh has always been the calm and collected type. She nods at him, face carefully blank, “Until we meet again.”

Harry cuts the connection to the mirror, letting it fall to the ground. It might be rude, the others might have wanted to speak to him, but Harry is done.

He glances down at Hermione, only part of her face is visible, the rest is hidden by bushy brown hair that escaped from her ponytail. The urge to breakdown almost overcomes him, but Harry soothes it with the knowledge that it won’t be long before he joins them. There’s no escaping this pocket dimension. He will die here. He doesn’t have to live without them.

With everything dead and his squad free from their bonds, Harry doesn’t have to worry about rationing the little magic he has left. He reaches into the remnants of his magic and spreads it out across the area. Draco and Astoria are dead. As are Daphne, Justin, Susan, and Blaise. Terry and Hannah are bright flickers of life energy that dwindle to nothing in the span of five minutes.

“Later, dork!” Ginny’s voice echoes off walls and Harry can’t fight the smile it brings to his face.

“I can’t wait until we meet again, Harry.” Luna says and Harry doesn’t bother to fight down the flood of tears that finally start. “Hopefully, the Midwargals don’t carry our souls too far apart.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Neville announces. “But, let’s try to avoid the pleasantries the next time we meet.”

Harry laughs, the sound as sad as it is amused. “I make no promises!”

He grabs Hermione, pulling her corpse to rest beside Ron instead of crumpled behind him. It takes him five minutes, squeezing himself into a space between them, and by the time he’s comfortably situated, Neville, Luna, and Ginny’s life energy vanishes.

There’s nothing left to do. Harry spends a couple moments thinking about Teddy and Lily. He wishes this could have been avoided. He never wanted his children to be orphaned the way he had been. At least, he knows they’ll be taken care of, protected, loved. His squad will look out for them. And he knows Molly and Arthur will raise them right. They won’t grow up like he did.

Harry pulls the vial out of his pocket, uncorks it, and swallows the basilisk poison within.

Five minutes later he’s dead.

**Author's Note:**

> So, since everyone's trapped inside, I've decided to post random bits and pieces that are buried in my fanfiction files. This is one of those bits It's not finished as you noticed, but I figured that reading something unfinished is better than reading nothing.


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